Islamic Food Sovereignty

Food sovereignty, as regulated in Law No. 18 of 2012 on Food, serves as a fundamental strategy to achieve food security through farmers' rights and access to agricultural resources such as land, water, seeds, technology, and markets. This concept differs from food security, which is supported by the FAO, as it originated from a global farmers' movement through La Via Campesina since 1992, involving organizations from various continents. The International Planning Committee (IPC) in 2006 formulated four main pillars: the right to food, access to productive resources, agroecological production, and protectionist trade and local markets.

Islamic Food Sovereignty develops the food sovereignty concept by infusing sharia values and maqasid al-sharia, enabling every individual, community, or nation to control their food system in accordance with ecological, social, economic, and Islamic cultural conditions. It emphasizes halal and tayyib food (healthy and sustainable), collective land access without absolute ownership, equitable distribution that prevents israf (wastefulness), monopolies, and ensures access for all as taught in the Qur'an (Al-A’raf: 31; Al-Ma’un: 1-3). This vision rejects food systems based on riba, gharar, and global corporate exploitation.

In Indonesia, the acceptance of food sovereignty remains hindered by misunderstandings and resistance to the term "sovereignty," despite its alignment with Islam. Islamic Food Sovereignty addresses these shortcomings by pursuing not only self-reliance and sustainability, but also barakah, justice, and blessings based on the Qur'an and Sunnah, including the proposed Food Sovereignty Index that focuses on sharia-compliant access to agricultural resources (Syahyuti et al., 2015).


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